Other-directed moral emotions

 

 

... joint intentional activities ... have a unique social-motivational dimension, as a kind of “meshing of goals and intentions”.  Children create with a partner a joint agent “we” that pursues a joint goal, which naturally includes that each partner has her own individual role to play.  Whereas the group actions of apes are all about individuals achieving their individual ends in joint contexts – they are using one another as social tools – in their early joint intentional activities, children and their partners decide to do something together.  In forming this partnership, each individual voluntarily makes herself cooperatively dependent on the other.  

These early joint intentional activities ... spawn some new dimensions of social relatedness.  If we as collaborative partners are equally necessary for our joint success, and if we could switch roles and still be successful, and if we both adhere to the same criteria in playing a role, then we must be somehow equivalent or equal as partners.  This recognition of self-other equivalence generates a mutual respect and sense of equality among (potential) collaborative partners.  Further, when it is necessary to assure my partner before we begin that he can trust me - and to get a similar assurance from him in return – the two of us can make a joint commitment to collaborate.  In a simple exchange such as “Let's X” followed by “OK,” we both openly pledge to play our role in accordance with the role standards that we both know in common ground are necessary for joint success; moreover, we each entitle the other to call us to account if we do not.  We thus enter into a web of normative relations in which each collaborative partner is accountable to the other for treating her with appropriate respect by responsibly following mutually understood (and implicitly agreed to) normative standards.  

Following the lead of contractualist moral philosophers, then, our working hypothesis is that the evolutionary and ontogenetic roots of human morality lie in cooperative activities for mutual benefit: "The primal scene of morality is not one in which I do something to you or you do something to me, but one in which we do something together" (Korsgaard 1996, 275).  Participation in joint intentional activities results in individuals who treat their partners as equals, with mutual respect, because joint intentional activities are structured by the joint agent “we,” which creates a new kind of social relationship between “I” and “you” (perspectivally defined) as constituents of that “we”.  That is to say, participation in joint intentional activities creates the conditions for what philosophers call second-personal relationships, based on respect, commitment, accountability / responsibility, and fairness (Darwall 2006).  

... The relationship between partners has now become normative; each feels obligated to honor her commitment by responsibly playing her role and accepting her partner's criticism as legitimate if she does not.  

Michael Tomasello – “Becoming Human - a theory of ontogeny” (2019:191-192)

References in text:  

Korsgaard, C.  1996.  The Sources of Normativity.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  

Darwall, S.  2006.  The Second-Person Standpoint: Respect, Morality, and Accountability.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  

 

 

Introduction

Other-directed moral emotions are defined as moral emotions and attitudes that serve the interests of others.  Yet, a trait can only evolve if it benefits the self.  Why would self-serving organisms evolve traits that benefit others?  

We hypothesise that cooperation is the preferred option when benefits can optimally be achieved mutually rather than alone or competitively (André, Fitouchi, Debove, and Baumard, 2022).  

As with any species, the environment shapes the evolution of human behaviour and emotions.  The idea of other-regarding moral emotions is based on several key concepts:  

 

 

Risky foraging niche

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This evolutionary scenario, we propose, explains empathic concern towards non-kin, other-directed fairness, responsibility, guilt, forgiveness, the Golden Rule, conflict minimisation, and generalised care in humans.  It does not explain why people are cruel, which has a competitive rather than cooperative motive.  

Simplified time line:  

The ancestors of the genus Homo (i.e., great apes) were, we believe, already sociable, intelligent, and using tools.  

 

... as the genus Homo was emerging some 2 million years ago, a global cooling and drying trend created an expansion of open environments and a radiation in terrestrial monkeys, who would have competed with Homo for many plant foods.  Scavenging large carcasses killed by other animals would have been one possible response.  Such scavenging would have required multiple participants, as other carnivores would be competing for those carcasses as well.

Tomasello et al. (2012) – Two Key Steps in the Evolution of Human Cooperation: The Interdependence Hypothesis

 

From 2 million years ago:  cooperative scavenging, cooperative breeding, generalised sharing, generalised care, discouragement of hogging and stinginess and laziness.  Cooperative breeding means to share the feeding and care of children within a small group.  It is likely to increase the reproductive success of I, the individual, if I enlist other adults to help look after and feed my children.  See: Perry (2021:173).

From 500,000 years ago:  cooperative hunting of large game.

From 150,000 years ago:  emergence of large tribal cultural groups that were separated into small associated bands.  

From 10,000 years ago:  distributive justice and free rider control; procedural justice.  This is approximately when humans began to give up the nomadic way of life, living and surviving with friends and family, and to settle in large, culturally mixed, personally anonymous city states.  There has been a great deal of relatively recent human evolution, even in the past 5,000 years (Subbaraman, 2012).  

The actual picture may be much more complicated (Singh and Glowacki, 2022).  However, we hypothesise a long period (~1.5 million years) when human ancestors lived in small mobile egalitarian bands with an immediate-return foraging strategy where property was not hoarded (Woodburn, 1982).  

Cooperative breeding, and sharing, are other-directed as well as self-directed activities.  Collaboration is based on a normative, self-regulating relationship between second-personal agents “I” and “you” (Tomasello, 2016, 2019).  

 

 

Fairness

 

 

Collaboration towards win-win mutualism

=>

joint agent “we”

=>

 

 

Being fair is not the same as being nice.  If I am extra nice to one person by giving her more resources, that nevertheless might be unfair to others.  But if the recipient needs the resources more, or is somehow responsible for more of the resources being available (for example, she did more work), then perhaps it might be fair after all.  The judgment of fairness is thus always grounded in some judgment of equality – equal resources per person, or per unit of need, or per unit of work effort, or whatever – with the self being treated, impartially, as equivalent to others (in terms of deservingness).  A sense of fairness naturally comes with a sense of obligation: everyone including oneself should get what they deserve.  A sense of fairness thus competes, in some circumstances, with both selfish and generous motives.  

– Tomasello (2019:232-233)

 

 

Young children first start to show a sense of other-directed fairness – i.e., aimed at the advantage of the other person, not just the self – at around the age of three years (Tomasello, 2019).  This is the same age that they first are able to put their heads collaboratively together with others to form a joint agent “we”: for example, making and keeping commitments to collaborate; helping and showing loyalty towards partners; and attempting to restore a collaborative relationship with a partner who walks away for no reason.  

Other-directed fairness is part and parcel of impartial fairness; and impartial fairness is part and parcel of being in a collaborative joint agent "we", in which "we" are all equivalent: whether this is a partnership, team, small group, or large group.  

We hypothesise that other-directed fairness evolved in at least two stages: 1) the capacity and desire to share with others (impartially based on need, with stinginess and free riding discouraged); 2) distributive justice – limiting rewards to collaborative partners (impartially based on the self-other equivalence of partners, with free riders excluded altogether).  

Regarding this, there are two significant differences between chimpanzees and humans: 1) chimpanzees do not like to share resources, unless strategically with coalitionary partners; 2) chimpanzees are self-centred and competitive and not impartial (Tomasello, 2019).  By contrast, humans are largely cooperative, and we love to share both generously and impartially.  

Partners expect and demand to be respected as equals during and after collaboration, and anything less is sure to be met with social resentment and indignation (Tomasello, 2016, 2019).  Instead of being treated fairly, I have been exploited, cheated, bullied, or ignored.  

Why do we typically feel a sense of reward when we treat our partners fairly?  It may be satisfaction at all the deserving partners impartially getting what they deserve; satisfaction at (distributive or procedural) justice having been done; that things have been done right.  

So, deciding what is fair to me is not (only) a matter of “what I can get away with, without others protesting or thinking too badly of me” (André, Fitouchi, Debove, and Baumard, 2022): it is perhaps more accurately a matter of impartially giving each partner what they deserve, given self-other equivalence among partners; and excluding free riders except out of charity.  Deservingness may be satisfied through equal divisions (equality); or equal return per unit of investment (proportionality); or per unit of need (charity).  

 

 

Step 1: generalised sharing; step 2: distributive justice

Why do humans enjoy sharing so much – whether hospitably, collaboratively, or in response to need?  The answer is probably our risky foraging niche, where, in ancient times, to be part of a personal sharing network was to survive.  

Sharing is a way of “pooling risk”: it is a social insurance for every participant and beneficiary.  When I go out hunting, there is the risk I will catch nothing.  When I catch nothing, my group will share with me; and vice versa.  The benefits of living in a sharing network are mutual over time.

The diagram below is from Adrian V Jaeggi and Michael Gurven – “Natural Cooperators: Food Sharing in Humans and Other Primates”: Evolutionary Anthropology 22: 186-195 (2013)

Immediate- and delayed-return societies

In the classical model (Woodburn, 1982), immediate-return societies are those in which food is not stored or hoarded, and instead, is consumed within a day or two of being procured.  Delayed-return economies are those which employ farming and cultivation methods and/or other technology such as traps, weirs, beehives, etc., so that there is a delay between effort being expended and the reward being gained.  In immediate-return societies, food is shared freely and the ethos is egalitarian.  In delayed-return societies, there are opportunities for personal dominance as individuals may control the means of production and food supply, and crucially, others may depend on them economically.  

 

Batek regarded each other as basically equal in their intrinsic value and therefore worthy of respect. Although some people, particularly shamans, were held in especially high regard, they neither expected nor received special treatment from others. All Batek felt that they deserved the same consideration as everyone else, and they were not shy in saying so.

Kirk M Endicott and Karen L Endicott – “The Headman was a Woman – The Gender Egalitarian Batek of Malaysia” (2008)

 

We know that some modern hunter-gatherer societies pursue a fiercely egalitarian ethos, to varying degrees.  Some are completely egalitarian, with the head man or woman serving as a wise guide, but not occupying a privileged or unequally-favoured position in the group; e.g., in the Batek of Malaysia (Endicott and Endicott, 2008).  

Given that there was a shift, at some point early in human history, from the great ape competitive way of life based on dominance hierarchies to a cooperative, prosocial way of life, in a process known as self-domestication (see: Perry, 2021:116) – the personal mobility and autonomy inherent in immediate-return societies imply freedom; no person can command another; and this in turn implies egalitarianism.  

Most non-human animals, including the primates, live by immediate-return economies; exceptions are those species that store and process food for later; e.g., squirrels; ants; and bees.  Human ancestors had to learn how to farm and cultivate other species of animals and plants.  This implies that there was a sizeable length of time when all human ancestors lived in immediate-return societies, and were therefore egalitarian including being non-patriarchal.  We therefore hypothesise a number of concurrent shifts:  

 

 

 

Self-other equivalence

The claim is that partners within a collaborative joint agent know cognitively that they are equivalent in a number of ways including value and status (Tomasello, 2016, 2019).  This is called self-other equivalence.  Tomasello (2019) proposes that children learn this as they learn to cooperate at a young age, which implies that it is not necessarily completely evolved or genetic.  

This implies that fairness evolved in the continued presence of cognitive self-other equivalence in tandem with evolving forms of cooperation.  

From the “bird’s eye view” of the joint agent’s perspective, within each role, the partners are interchangeable.  

Following Tomasello (2019:191): self-other equivalence is justified like this:  

 

Each is equally necessary, but not sufficient on their own, for joint success.  This implies mutual utility and value.  

This implies mutual value and recognition of status: each partner is good enough to fill each role.  It also implies a sense of equivalence.  

This implies mutual recognition of status, since each person’s competitive, self-interested ego is subject to and constrained equally by the impartial demands of their role.  

 

Some of the reasons for self-other equivalence are also reasons for impartiality, mutual value, and mutual recognition of status, and therefore for mutual respect and deservingness.  

The human paradigm of cooperation and its corollary, self-other equivalence, is an alternative to the self-centred, competitive world-view of the chimpanzee.  

Examples of self-other equivalence and exchanging perspectives:  

 

 

I feel obliged to treat my collaborative partners with respect and fairness because: 1) we are all equivalent; 2) we are all deserving; within the joint agent “we”.  After a successful collaboration, “we” are all deserving because we have all fulfilled our roles working towards the joint goal, and I benefit from this personally because the joint goal is also my goal.  

The normativity – pressure of shouldness – of the obligation to treat collaborative partners respectfully and fairly is thus derived from: 1) your biological pressure to thrive; 2) your need and expectation that this will be respected, especially as you know that you are a valuable partner of good standing; 3) our pressure to achieve the joint goal; 4) my pressure to retain you as a partner; 5) my pressure to maintain a good cooperative identity/reputation for the long term (i.e., for my partners to think well of me).

I am normatively obliged to help my collaborative partners because this is helping “us” (myself and the other partners) to achieve our joint goal(s).  

See also: Responsibility (below)

 

 

Empathic concern

 

... during human evolution, great apes' sympathy for kin and friends evolved into humans' sympathy for a wide variety of others, initially for collaborative partners and then for everyone in the social group.  Modern infants have inherited both versions.  

Tomasello (2019)

 

... friends in the stone age depended on one another for their very survival. Humans lived in close-knit communities, and friends were people with whom you went hunting mammoths. You survived long journeys and difficult winters together. You took care of one another when one of you fell sick, and shared your last morsels of food in times of want. Such friends knew each other more intimately than many present-day couples.

“Were we happier in the stone age?” – The Guardian, UK, 5th September 2014

 

Humans’ sense of empathic concern for other humans evolved in the context of living in small interdependent groups.  Chimpanzees and bonobos show some empathic concern for each other, and will help others if the cost is not too great, but they have zero sense of fairness (Tomasello, 2016, 2019).  They are somewhat interdependent, while humans, living in our risky foraging niche, are highly interdependent with and valuable to each other, and consequently, feel more general empathic concern.  If you are valuable for my existence, then as a normal person, I will develop towards you: 1) a sense of empathic concern; 2) a warm positive regard.  

In essence, this small-group living is a loose form of collaboration towards win-win mutualism.  

Emotions can be seen as psychological reactions to fitness opportunities or threats (Perry, 2021).  As such, empathic concern can be seen as my emotional reaction to someone else’s goals being thwarted.  Empathic concern is rather fragile and can easily be switched off if we dislike, disapprove of, or are competing with the other person (Decety, 2011).  

Empathic concern evolved in the context of parental care in mammals (and birds), and so, naturally, it is linked in the brain to social attachment and taking action (Decety, 2011).  

 

 

The Golden Rule

 

... people are much more likely to experience [the] altruistic motive when another person’s welfare is made emotionally salient to them by empathic perspective-taking ... or identifiability ... .  

Dill and Darwall (2014:13)

 

Chimpanzees will adopt the perspective of a competitor, seeing the world through their eyes, in order to find out what they are “up to” (Tomasello, 2019).  In other words, their motive for perspective taking is largely Machiavellian and competitive.  

The human social world is one of multiple perspectives, as each person has their own perspective onto our common ground.  Humans will readily combine empathic concern with “imagine self in position of other” perspective taking, and this is what we call the Golden Rule: “I feel empathic concern for myself (or a loved one)”; “I see myself/them in you” => “I feel empathic concern for you”.  

It is stressful for us to acknowledge someone else’s suffering unless we then resolve and are able to take action (Perry, 2021:157).  

 

 

Reciprocity

Reciprocity is related to fairness.  Both are examples of a fundamental mode of human interaction that Fiske (1991) calls “equality matching” (the other three are “communal sharing”, “authority ranking” and “market pricing”).  In reciprocity, I give you what I feel you deserve, in response to something you have done.  In some cases, this is the result of a contract or agreement to exchange goods or services of equal value.  We do this impartially and self-other equivalently.  

Three common forms of reciprocity are tit-for-tat, attitudinal (matching the attitude of others, usually used with strangers), and long-term “buddy” reciprocity (usually used with friends) where strict account of each interaction is not necessarily kept.  

 

 

Responsibility

For me to exercise responsibility means to uphold the ideal standards associated with my role; to behave responsibly; to be a responsible collaborative partner.  It means to turn in excellent work and to do my duty.  These role ideals carry a normative pressure to achieve them, which is derived ultimately from the universal biological pressure to thrive (achieve goals).  

As well as being a normative obligation towards the self and others, responsibility is another word for accountability.  To take responsibility also means to shoulder a burden of duty (to achieve role ideals).  

I am responsible to myself and my collaborative partners, the joint agent, in which “we” collaborate to impartially regulate “you” and “I” on behalf of “us” in the direction of 1) achieving the joint goal; and 2) fulfilling our obligations of helping, respect and fairness towards each other.  This collaborative-regulatory process is the essence of morality (Tomasello, 2019).  

Each partner’s role ideals are sub-goals of the overall goal.  Role ideals in general are pre-cursors of moral principles in general  (Tomasello, 2016).  Moral principles are ideal ways to cooperate towards a joint goal (Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse, 2019; Perry, 2023) and are therefore goals in themselves, and moral values are policies for achieving these goals.  In other words, cooperation is instrumentally necessary to achieve joint goals, and moral principles are the ideal ways to cooperate in general, and are therefore normative.  

The normativity of responsibility is therefore derived from the instrumental normativity of the joint goal and the social normativity of respect and fairness towards others (animated by the pressure to achieve social well being).  Normativity is here defined as the pressure to achieve goals in general.  

 

... moral obligations are represented as legitimate interpersonal demands  

Dill and Darwall (2014:24)

 

When we make a commitment to collaborate, we form a joint agent “we”, and you and I identify with “us” (our goals are aligned).  Each of us thereby relinquishes some personal control in favour of the joint agent, and this joint control is directed interpersonally as normative pressure given and received between partners to be diligent, skilful, etc.: 1) for the sake of our joint goal; and 2) because each partner is taking a risk by relying on the other – thereby threatening their personal well being.

 

 

Partner control and accountability

Partner control means attempting to turn a poorly performing partner (the self or others) into a well performing partner (Tomasello, 2016).  

If partner A feels that he has been treated unfairly, unjustly or disrespectfully by partner B, he can make a “respectful protest” towards partner B, informing her of his resentment but respectfully assuming that she is a cooperative person who wants to maintain her cooperative identity. If partner B is still behaving poorly after this, then partner A always has the option to change partners (partner choice), and partner B will run the risk of damaging her own cooperative identity in the process.  A cooperative identity is my standing with my cooperative partners, past or present.  

 

... moral anger drives its subject towards a unique goal: to make the wrongdoer hold himself accountable to the moral demand he flouted.

Dill and Darwall (2014:14)

 

To hold someone accountable is to press the demand that they fulfil their responsibilities, through protest, blame, reproach, indignation, condemnation, or punishment (Dill and Darwall, 2014).  

Guilt means to turn the respectful protest upon oneself (through self-other equivalence), to admit fault, and take accountability, accompanied by self-blame, self-reproach, or self-punishment (Tomasello, 2016).  

 

First and foremost, guilt leads its subject to take responsibility for her wrongdoing ... .  Second, guilt motivates its subject to make amends with the victim of wrongdoing by apologizing ... , making reparations ... , striving to correct future behavior ... , and even self-punishing ... .  Guilt is characterized by other-directed empathy and concern for the victim of wrongdoing ... .  Finally, guilt, whether dispositional or occurrent, leads its subjects to behave more morally in general ... .

Dill and Darwall (2014:26)

 

If the offender agrees to hold him- or herself accountable, by admitting fault, expressing remorse, apologising, and offering to make amends – then, and only then, do we feel we can forgive them (Dill and Darwall, 2014).  A shortcut for the perpetrator, that expresses all this, and enables forgiveness, is for them to say that they understand and deserve the blame and punishment they are being given.  

 

What is the motive driving morally conscientious behavior?  When we “do the right thing,” what are we trying to accomplish?  

Our answer to this question is that morally conscientious behavior is driven by the moral conscience; an intrinsic desire to comply with moral demands to which one may be legitimately held accountable, or equivalently, to comply with one’s moral obligations.  This is the accountability theory of moral conscience.  

Dill and Darwall (2014:14)

 

The conscience looks both forwards, by regulating future behaviour, and backwards, with guilt, self-blame and holding oneself accountable for past behaviour.  

We are obliged, and accountable, to ourselves, and our partners, to achieve the joint goal and its subgoals (i.e., there is normative pressure to do so).  This is true even if our partners are fellow members of our large group, and our joint goal is thriving and surviving together (win-win mutualism).  

 

 

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is an aspect of reciprocity.  If you and I are taking turns to “cooperate” and you suddenly “defect” (let me down) then I have two rational options: I can forgive you, with appropriate conditions on your part, and carry on our cooperative relationship; or defect in kind, effectively ending the partnership.  

Reciprocity can be studied using computer simulations.  Two computer-simulated agents play a game together over many rounds, where in each round, each agent can either “cooperate” with the other, or “defect”, based on what the other did in the previous round (i.e., using tit-for-tat reciprocity).  The aim is to see, for various strategies, how long it takes for mutual cooperation to fall apart.

The winning strategy has been found to be “hopeful, generous and forgiving”.  “Hopeful” means that you need to start the interaction by being cooperative, and hope that this will encourage the other party to cooperate in return.  “Forgiving” means that if the other person defects, you will work hard to rebuild a working relationship of cooperation.  “Generous” means not to be too worried about getting exact returns for what you have put in, but instead be pleased to be engaged in a cooperative relationship where everybody benefits.

On the computer it is found that if you forgive 100% of the time, cooperation quite quickly falls apart and this is not a successful strategy.  If you always forgive bad behaviour, there is no incentive for the badly behaved person to behave well, and since they are not interested in mutual cooperation, the working relationship cannot continue.

 

 

Conflict minimisation

Conflict is costly for both sides, including the winner.  Conflict minimisation is another way to achieve win-win mutualism: cooperation for mutual benefits (Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse, 2019).   

 

 

Generalised care in humans

The African Painted Dog or African Wild Dog is a cooperative carnivore like humans, that lives in a similar foraging niche as ancient humans (African savannah, woodland), uses cooperative breeding (with the dominant pair breeding only), and feeds their old, sick or injured members who cannot hunt (Born Free, 2023).  

There is archaeological evidence of ancestral humans caring for their sick and injured going back up to 1.6 million years ago in Homo erectus (Spikins, 2015) and increasing in frequency as we get nearer to the present day.  This has been a great puzzle for evolutionary anthropologists.  Perhaps the answer is that cooperative health care is part and parcel of an ethos of cooperative breeding, communal sharing and cooperative empathic concern, together with the Golden Rule: “that could be me”.  

 

 

Why are people cruel?  

 

Natural selection works on every individual’s relative advantage compared with others; hence, gaining an absolute benefit is insufficient. If individuals were satisfied with any absolute benefit, they might still face negative fitness consequences if they were doing less well than competing others. It makes sense, therefore, to compare one's gains with those of others.

Sarah F Brosnan and Frans B M de Waal – “Evolution of responses to (un)fairness”

 

 

D, the Dark factor of personality, is defined as

the general tendency to maximize one's individual utility – disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others –, accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.

Moshagen, Hilbig, and Zettler (2018)

 

or: thriving at the expense of others.  

 

The “Dark factor” theory of personality states that all the varieties of “dark” behaviour share a common “dark” core, defined above.  Some of these include controlling behaviour, egotism, a sense of entitlement, grandiosity, Machiavellianism, moral disengagement (ignoring morality), sadism, self-interest, and spite.  However, self-interest can be beneficial for others in some circumstances, e.g., if they depend on you.  

Narcissistic personality disorder, anti-social personality disorder, and borderline (emotionally unstable) personality disorder all lie on the Cluster B spectrum as classified by psychologists (Cooper, 1994).  This spectrum highlights impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and self-centred, goal-focused behaviour (Baskin-Sommers, Krusemark, and Ronningstam, 2014).  Psychopathy is a separate developmental disorder that results in an absence of negative emotions and a severe blunting of positive emotions (Walker, 2019a).  As a result, psychopaths are ungoverned by emotions including moral emotions, and fear, and do not respond to punishment.  However, an intelligent psychopath can learn that it is easier and more auspicious to live an ethical life (Walker, 2019b).  While narcissists may deliberately exploit others emotionally by belittling and humiliating them, someone with ASPD may deliberately exploit others materially by stealing from or robbing them.  Borderline personality disorder cannot really be called morally “dark” as there is no systematic exploitation of others.  Someone with BPD may feel chronically empty and alone and have unstable emotions (Greenberg, 2016).  This may lead them to forget the needs of others.  

Not everyone who is on the spectrum has a disorder.  Behaviour is classified as disordered when it harms the self or others.  For example, a narcissist may believe they are better than everyone else and that they deserve special treatment; but if they have a full complement of normal empathic concern, and they don’t atypically hurt themselves or others, it is not a disorder.  Conversely, we are all capable and guilty of “dark” behaviour.  

 

By definition, a personality disorder is the name for:

A repetitious and relatively inflexible maladaptive pattern of thinking and behavior that starts in childhood and continues into adulthood. It is stable across most situations and is expressed in most relationships. It limits people's ability to react in a flexible and spontaneous way to new people and new situations.

“Narcissistic Personality Disorder” is the name of one of those patterns.

Elinor Greenberg (2018)

 

There is controversy over whether narcissistic and other Cluster B personality disorders are genetic disorders of interpersonal relations (which I agree with) or learned adaptations to difficult childhood situations (Greenberg, 2016).  I view NPD as a disorder of cooperation whereby the individual is fundamentally self-centred, competitive / dominant / controlling / destructive instead of other-regarding, cooperative, egalitarian and compassionate.  Possibly ASPD is a flexible disorder of cooperation whereby the individual may flexibly switch between morality and instrumental amorality.  BPD involves difficulty with social attachment and social relationships in general.  

Greenberg (2016) identifies three kinds of narcissists:  

We may add a fourth kind: a sub-category of the toxic or malignant narcissist: the serial rapist or serial killer.  What they all have in common is that they like to shame, devalue and belittle victims.  A covert narcissist gains their glory reflected from someone “great”; as if they are too afraid to take the limelight themselves.  They tend to be quietly malicious while promoting a saintly image.  They may harm others through passive aggression, provoking, spreading malicious rumours, and other devious means, rather then direct confrontation.  Someone who is passive aggressive generally does not know they are being so, and covert narcissists are the most amenable to therapy out of all the categories of narcissists.  This may suggest they have a strongly nurtured component to the narcissistic parts of their personality rather than a completely genetic origin.  

The various kinds of narcissists are defined by how they achieve their competitive advantage over others.  Exhibitionist narcissists are primarily concerned with status and how they appear to others.  Malignant or toxic narcissists are primarily concerned with hurting others.  

A psychopath, even without the emotion of empathic concern, is capable of helping others when necessary (e.g., Walker, 2019c; 2021).  Athena Walker, a self-identifying psychopath, describes this as “action without feeling”.  This supports the idea that human helping behaviour has two separate evolved components: emotion, and behaviour.  Empathy has three (four) aspects: cognitive empathy, emotional resonance, and empathic concern (and helping behaviour).  Psychopaths only have access to cognitive empathy (and helping behaviour).  

Importantly, in the scientific literature and popular culture, psychopaths are confused with narcissists and people with ASPD.  This may be because they are self-centred and more or less untroubled by empathic concern.  The difference is that narcissists tend to be cruel, sadistic, dominant, controlling, etc.  It is pointless trying to reason with a narcissist, in a dispute: you have to strategise your way out.

At the other end of the spectrum of prosociality, there is a minority of “extraordinary altruists” (Marsh, 2017) who are unusually caring, generous and altruistic.  Around 40% of people possess both the normal “light” and a significant “dark” personality profile.  These “dark” traits damage relationships and hold people back in life (Neumann and Kaufman, 2020).  

Scatter plot of the (dark, light) scores of 1518 people (Kaufman, Yaden, Hyde, and Tsukayama, 2019).  These data suggest that people are mostly “good” (i.e., most data points are in the top left of the diagram) and that extreme malevolence is rare (bottom right of diagram).  

References

André, Jean-Baptiste; Léo Fitouchi; Stéphane Debove; and Nicolas Baumard – “An evolutionary contractualist theory of morality”; PsyArXiv; 24 May 2022; https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2hxgu

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Born Free (2023) – https://www.bornfree.org.uk/animals/african-wild-dogs

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